I have a low end PC that I would like to upgrade for gaming. Specifically Arma 3 running smooth and bf3. I don't mind medium graphics settings, its the FPS that bugs me. I know i need to upgrade my CPU, GPU, and RAM. However i don't know where to start, or which ones to get. I have a budget of around 300-400. Its a Dell Precision Desktop T3500 with windows 7 32 bit. It has 4 gigs ram, but 32 bit only allows 3.25. (I will upgrade to 64) The CPU is a Intel Xeon CPU w3503 @2.4 ghz. I have two quadro nvs 295 for GPU. What i need to know is what i should get first, and all the parts im gonna need to get this running like a gaming rig. Thnx in advance.

The problem is that your motherboard doesn't support any of the newer CPUs. You're running on an X58 Express chipset motherboard and based upon some reading the only supported CPUs that have been tested to work are Xeon processors which would make it a rather expensive upgrade. It doesn't help much that your current CPU is a dual core CPU which would bottleneck any modern card out there. An upgrade to a quad core alone would run you $550 from newegg unless you wanted to take your chances used via eBay. At this point I would say it's not going to be a good investment trying to turn an older workstation into a gaming system and consider saving, investing in building a gaming system from the ground up. If you must insist on upgrading this system then the only thing I would invest any funds into would be a low cost GPU like a GeForce 650Ti Boost or a Radeon 7850.

I suppose you might be able to, the problem is that I never suggest buying all parts used for a gaming PC or any main use PC. If it was a secondary PC where you didn't mind downtime much it wouldn't be a big deal but used parts aren't worth the hassle for a main system. $550 might be able to build you a decent PC for low range to medium range gaming and it might be able to run BF3 and Arma 3 with ok framerates, granted you're going to have to turn off a lot of graphics options and turn down the resolution a fair bit. Presuming that you have a Windows 7 license available (not the one with the Dell) and you can transfer the hard drives & RAM out of the Dell here's what I would suggest:

Total comes out to under $500. Of course if you have to buy a Windows 7 license then that's another $100 and if you need a hard drive or two then you're looking at another $60 so this build is pretty dependent on transferring those parts that we can from the Dell to the new system.

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